The abyss - some help when the game is going south quick
by Daniel Norwood on 12/06/13
One of my golfers just finished a round and the score went up while his game went down. Below are some words to help me friend.
Knowledge – Application – Feel & Judgment, the 4 by words of Joe Norwood.
Judgment is the playing of the game itself and no swing can hold up when the mind decides to descend into the abyss of failure. It can start with an errant drive, a missed putt, the weather changing, fatigue but it eventually comes down to the mind losing its grasp on the task at hand which is scoring.
Gramps used to say I’ll teach you to swing but the scoring is left up to you.
1. Take that 24 inch 8 iron with you and use it to do your practice swings with. A standard club will not afford you the ability to strike deep on your practice swings otherwise every practice swing will have a 6 inch divot but the little club will afford you the depth you need in your swing. Use it a lot.
2. I haven’t made the practice clubs yet, they are in my office so I should do it soon. I am toying with the idea of putting the training grip on it but I have to cut it so that both V’s are pointing to the opposite shoulders. It’s not an easy task because I then have to file down the rubber to make the grip flush. I’ve actually made myself my own training grip using the best parts of a left handed and right handed grip but the process is too cumbersome to put it on the market.
3. Until then you have your little 8 (and I love the 8, so did my Grandfather)
a. When you’re on the course use this club to stretch your upper body.
b. The shoulders and back will tighten up during cold weather and cause the body to become brittle making this swing harder to perform.
c. Especially take your left arm to position one and then put your right on it and pull the shoulder and back muscles or stretch them into the backswing.
i. This will help when swinging
ii. Also use it with the right arm and go to position one and practice the vertical move or right elbow chuck from the book. I call it the hinge. Practice keeping your right hip and shoulder pointing to the right heel and open and close the hinge or elbow (only with the right – do not hold the club with the left in the beginning)
1. Fold the right arm into the shoulder or close the hinge and unfold the right arm completely or open the hinge and keep doing it from position. Fold and unfold are terms my Grandfather kept hammering into my brain for many years.
2. Make sure the right thumbnail is pointing to the 3-3:30 position and not pointing to the sky when at position one. You do this by using the meat of the palm – by the thumb and rotate the hand counter clock wise to keep the club hooded.
3. It is entirely possible to have the thumbs down at address and have the right thumb flat and pointing to the sky at position one. It can happen without you knowing it and once the right thumb is flat at position one then the club is no longer hooded but open and an error will occur.
4. You can’t think about your swing on the golf course. All you can do it try to feel. Do not work your swing while playing. Clear your mind and think of absolutely nothing during the swing. Any thought, about anything, will produce an errant shot. Think about what you have to do before your swing but never during.
5. After swinging with the little 8 be sure to take at least 3 practice swings before you swing. Stay in your pre-shot routine. Keep to the routine during every shot. Always have at least 3 practice swings during the routine and feel the practice swings and if you’re feeling the wrists break or the body move or anything out of the ordinary then keep swinging until you feel it.
a. The two things I feel during the practice swing routine are sealed wrists and swing depth out of the shoulder.
b. You may want to focus your swing feel on the vertical down and the sealed wrists. Try to keep it to 2 or 3 things. But above all do not think of these things during the swing.
These things will help but the abyss is always waiting. That’s the great thing about this game – avoiding the abyss and playing through a round with as little errors as possible. Alexander Findlay played a perfect round of golf in 1886 at the Montrose Club in Scotland. He score the 1st ever 72 in competition with 19 putts. That is comparable to a 53 to 55 today for 18 holes. Golf is a game of errors, we can never play error free, the best we can hope for is to miss them straight and make the putts when we need to.
Don’t forget to upload your swing to You Tube or send it to me on a “thumb drive” and I’ll upload it and provide some help for you.
I’ll get the training clubs to you as soon as possible.
Merry Christmas
Dan
